|
|
Revealing Urban Waters Once Mill Creek flowed through West Philadelphia. Now it is buried in a sewer, invisible to most people, but it continues to shape landscape and life. How can the buried river be revealed and rainwater celebrated so people feel and know the importance of these urban waters? |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Describing the Place Mill Creek is an inner-city neighborhood plagued by social and environmental problems: poverty, unemployment, deteriorated public infrastructure, derelict housing and vacant land, subsidence and flooding over buried streams and floodplains. Outsiders and first- time visitors tend to see only these negative qualities. To an insider, however, the picture is not uniformly bleak. There are islands of renewal and people with determination, energy, and vision working together to rebuild their community. There are bright, enthusiastic children and dedicated teachers. How can this place be described, in context, to highlight opportunities and resources as well as problems? How can "expert" knowledge and "local" knowledge, together, contribute to a deeper understanding of place and lead to new visions for the neighborhood's future? |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Landscape, Community, and Education Sulzberger Middle School is located on and near the old floodplain of Mill Creek. The school grounds and vacant land in the surrounding neighborhood present an opportunity for studying the processes of nature at work. How can a new curriculum organized around "The Urban Watershed" integrate learning, community development, and water resource management? |
|
Mill Creek Miniature Golf Two consecutive three-week sessions will explore the design for a miniature golf course that tells the natural and cultural history of the neighborhood and whose water hazards function as stormwater detention basins. The site plan produced in the first three weeks will be developed further in the second three weeks. This design project will be coordinated with Workshop III. |
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
Landscape Planning in the Mill Creek Watershed This three-week session will explore the use of tools and techniques for urban landscape planning and design at a scale that is sufficiently broad to encompass multiple objectives and multiple constraints, multiple sites and multiple time frames, multiple clients and multiple designers, multiple solutions and multiple impacts, multiple sources of both information and inspiration...in short, more than can reasonably be handled by one individual using traditional methods. The design of a miniature golf course will be placed within the broader physical and political context of a longer-term urban landscape development plan--one that includes a number of other, inter-related land uses. The session will seek to refine skills in site analysis, land allocation, and plan evaluation with particular emphasis on project organization and the use of a digital geographic information system. |
|
The Practice of Reflection
Review, reflection, and re-presentation of the entire semester.
Last Update: 26 September 1997
|